Bite Marks

You think the words will fix you, 

but they wont.

I remember endless,
pale fingers running up my
arms that were pickled in
goosebumps and I was
drowning in my own sweaty
skin pressed against yours.

 

Maybe I bit my lip, inviting
seduction and evading the
truth because maybe I wanted
you, but I only remember my thoughts
running through my mind like prisoners.

I had no idea how to live anymore.

 

I remember black eyes that
didn’t make me curious nor
arouse me in any way, but
still I held open the walls with my arms,
trembling, for fear that they would
crash around me,
crushing me until I was only
a breath away from
nothing and no one.

 

Your lips were made of
everything but skin,
nothing of love and nothing of mine.
I never knew them because
I forgot to think when you kissed me,
unwillingly.

First there was me inside myself,
alone but lonely and then
suddenly
there was you and 

you invaded me.

I raked fingers without nails
down my flesh until I could 

hear the scraping and feel the
guilt rotting inside me.
Mold covered my intestines
and lined my stomach with
a self-loathing fungus.

I am a virus.

 

After you kissed me,
I bit back the bile that
had risen in my throat
like a scream and
I could barely hold back
the fear that I would open
my mouth and release it.
Instead, I ran.

 

I lied on the ground and

the grass grew in my eyes

like filthy roots, trying to crawl

into my brain and choke me out 

with guilty weeds.

I clawed hopelessly at my eyes, 

trying to rip out the roots, but 

the tree had been planted and kept growing, 

first a stem and then a branch, 

shooting out of my eye like 

a constellation, a detonation of

shame that I could no longer ignore. 

I couldn’t control myself anymore.

 

The grass grew over my legs, 

wrapping and curling over into 

shapes that reminded me of what

it meant to live but I hadn’t 

done that in so long. 

I forgot how to breathe naturally and 

every breath felt like training a 

broken machine of tongue and teeth.

           

I practiced breathing for minutes 

or years, but you came running up 

the hill and sat down next to me. 

You didn’t touch the vines that 

had stolen my skin and 

had decomposed me into dirt.

 

You sat still and gave me a single 

blade of grass and whispered 

it didn’t happen.

You told me to wish on a 

piece of grass that you had pulled 

from beneath me. 

You told me to believe in life, 

in breathing, 

and you said 

it didn’t happen 

and you told me to wish on a

piece of grass that meant 

nothing to you and 

everything to me.

 

I took that grass, 

the piece you stole, 

I took it back and I ripped it in half, 

staring into your black eyes that

held nothing but a grey whisper of 

color.

I blinked it away, 

hoping I could forget 

every color in the world.

I tried throwing up the guilt in my stomach, 

but I kept choking. 

You went to touch my back but 

I didn’t feel it. 

I didn’t feel you at all.

 

I stopped breathing. 

My hands curled up in the shadows and 

spread out, rooting into the ground. 

I broke down and decayed until 

the blades grew over me, 

welcoming me, 

because I was full of all 

the desperation and neglect they craved.

 

You didn’t even notice as 

my skin wrinkled, 

browned, 

and flaked off in the wind. 

The stems in my eyes 

crawled down my body and 

planted themselves in every crevice 

until I no longer felt like 

living or

dying or 

being.